Fuck off egghead it’s because of bone magic.

‘Primitive version of steel’

its mild steel, you can’t make a primitive version of steel anymore than you can make primitive gold. Its steel or it isnt. If you want to say low carbon say that. But even mild steel is a sight better than pig iron.

Scandinavian smiths weren’t so dumb that they couldn’t tell the bones and ash made their swords harder.

The idea that they believed it made the swords stronger because of the animal spirits for no reason but they just happened to be right is super reductive of a practice that was likely based equally in faith and reason.

They knew it made iron stronger, couldn’t isolate the material that did it beyond somewhere in the bones, and came up with a pretty solid explanation for why the steel kept an edge longer and resisted deformation.

I always think of this panel from Warren Ellis’ Crecy when it comes to stuff like this. Like people may not have known exactly why this stuff worked but they knew what worked. The way that humans throughout history have come together to figure out solutions to complex, day-to-day problems like “how do I get the most out of the building materials available to me?” or “how do I keep my food from spoiling?” is my favorite part of history.

This goes so hard for talking about anything any indigenous culture did.

This also goes for things like “oh those silly Dark Ages people thought they had to pray over everything!” when you talk about directions like “say 5 Pater nosters when you stir the beer”.

Newsflash: when you say the same prayer eleventy bajillion times, *it works as a timer* as well as a prayer. This, IIRC, is also how bakers got the proper temps for ovens pre-thermostats: if you had to pull your hand out by such-and-such word, it was the right temp for bread.